Sex differences and practice effects on two visual-spatial tasks.

Sex differences on visual-spatial tasks have been assumed to be present in young children, and performance on visual-spatial tasks has been assumed to be resistant to modification. Third and fifth graders were pretested on embedded and successive figures. Half of the 110 children then received limited feedback after which both groups were posttested. Grade, time of testing, and type of task significantly affected visual-spatial performance. Additional study might indicate whether amount of practice influences final level of performance for girls and boys and the asymptote on visual-spatial tasks is similar.